Foxhole
by dropdeadred
Summary: "She was in Peshawar for four months; Green Zone for a year before that...she hasn't had four hours sleep in two years." Mac/Will, Part One of Three
1. Chapter 1

March 19th, 2010  
Peshawar, Pakistan

Considering the vernal equinox should be occurring any day now, the nights still seemed long out here. The sun had gone down several hours ago and yet it was still only 9pm. In the interest of remaining as inconspicuous as possible in the absolute blackness of the Khyber countryside, they had made camp around 1800 hours in time for the imminent sunset, and now all lay, too wired to sleep, and too exhausted to interact. Mackenzie tucked her knees up to her chest and took a tight grip on the opening of the sleeping bag, pulling it over her head and holding it closed. They were well prepared for the balmy 60 degree night, but Mackenzie's own chill came from inside. She was beyond tired.

The drive out here had been short, but the hike long. They'd driven towards the Afghan border as they had so many times before, but had taken a turn north today, and followed the Khyber Agency Road until they reached the river. Abandoning the vehicle, they had donned their packs and followed the river upstream for many hours. There had been a small earthquake a few months ago and this area remained deserted, but they still trod inland some way before they decided to make camp. Pete and Jim picked out a sheltered area in the lea of a low rock formation, and everybody sank gratefully down.

Peshawar was a modern city, as far as ancient modern cities in this part of the world went. They had enjoyed comfortable accommodations thus far, and the limited protection of the local administration for the most part, bolstered by the quiet support of the US military presence here. But a city whose authorities were unable to prevent bombing after bombing, and one during the local festivus, were unlikely to be able to offer much assistance to half a dozen weary journalists with only the vaguest proof of threats that had been allegedly directed at them. Finally feeling as unsafe as she ever had in her life, Mac had made the decision to first keep moving around the city and then eventually to leave it altogether. Tomorrow they would move on to Islamabad, and try for some anonymity in the more heavily populated metro there, but for now Mac wanted some quiet and some space where she could close her eyes and they could feel safe for a few hours.

They had traveled here a few months ago to cover growing hostilities between Pakistan's two major political parties, and arrived just in time to report on a grotesque attack on a crowded shopping area. The previous year they had spent in Baghdad's green zone had mistakenly given them the impression that things might be about to simmer down, but out here it was as bad as ever. The bomb in Peshawar was attributed to Al Qaida, and the Pakistani president swore to redouble his efforts in counter-terrorism, but the damage was done both to the city and to the delicate political balance between President Zardari and the increasingly vocal opposition. All the tentative hope was sucked out of the Eid celebrations, and the blackened shops and mosque, and the damaged hotel, intimidated anyone who tried to carry on as normal. The acts of extreme violence here were practically a daily occurrence. Mackenzie and her team had plenty to cover, basing themselves in Peshawar with frequent trips for b-roll and background to Kahari and Islamabad. All through December they reported on bombing after bombing, and the city seemed to enjoy not a moment's quiet at all. There was the sense that the city held its breath as 2009 ticked over into 2010, wondering if a new year meant a new start, cooler heads, less misery, but barely a week passed before the locals were rocked by two suicides by bomb and a device that launched a vehicle thirty feet into the air in a sickening cloud of smoke and fire when the unfortunate driver turned the key. The weeks stretched into months of day after day of dust and smoke and burning and dead bodies, of snatching sleep when they could quiet their minds enough to fall blessedly unconscious. Mackenzie could see her team growing thin and weary, the dark circles under the eyes of her correspondent getting harder and harder to mask. They reported the facts as fast as they could find and verify them. DC was hungry for more, heaped praise and encouragement on the team, promised they wouldn't need to be embedded much longer. Britain and the US were once again attempting to help broker a peace in Pakistan, they should hang tight and keep doing what they were doing. The mood on the ground wasn't so positive, the American journalists ignored by most of the populace and tolerated at best by the political factions clawing for traction on the growing body count. It was standing in front of a ruined mosque during prep one day that Mackenzie saw him first, across the street, a moustached man who might have been handsome had he not had her fixed in a cold, focused stare. Her cameraman saw her expression and his whole upper body swiveled clumsily to try to catch what she was seeing. The camera wasn't fast enough to see the man lift his hand and draw an index finger across his throat in a cutting motion.

They had returned to their hostel to find their rooms only mostly how they had left them. Nothing was missing but everything was off. They asked the manager if anybody unusual had been into the building today, but he merely shrugged. That night they all slept in one room, with a dresser pushed against the door. The weeks that followed found them rarely in one place for more than two nights at a stretch. They reported on every bomb, every shooting, of which there were many, attended and covered protests. They shot footage of the legitimate government, under whose aegis they had ostensibly been operating, brutalising citizens headed to an organised sit-in. It wasn't long before too much attention was turned their way and they quickly packed up and disappeared. Mackenzie saw the man with the moustache often, watching them, and her paranoia was difficult to keep in check. Who did he work for? Was he Zardari's or Sharif's? The pace kept by those intent on spreading terror, coupled with the crew's new nomadic existence, kept them on the go 18, 20 hours a day. Thus it seemed just another scene in a waking nightmare when their vehicle was rear-ended one evening as they searched for a place to spend that night. Pete had been about to get out to talk to the other driver, when Mackenzie saw in the rear-view mirror that same man who had been haunting them. As he stepped out of his car she saw him reach into his jacket and she grabbed Pete's arm.  
"Stop. Just drive away."  
Pete took one look at her face and did as she said.

They drove randomly until they came upon a hotel they had not yet patronised, and the six of them huddled together to spend one last sleepless night in Peshawar. In the morning they retrieved their battered SUV from the guarded parking down the street and, taking a deliberately circuitous route out of the city, set out West for the border. They took some quiet roads to make sure they were not being followed and finally turned north towards the Warsak Dam, then further north still deeper into the Khyber Pass. They left the vehicle where the road ended trusting that, even if somebody followed their path to its terminus, they had no way of knowing where its occupants went after. Would whoever was unhappy with them follow them up here? Had they already? Had that man meant merely to intimidate? Was he the one who had entered their rooms? Was he acting alone? Her ears rang with the strain of listening to the sounds of the night, desperately listening for anything unusual.

Mackenzie tried to put him from her mind, for now, maybe actually fall asleep. The problem with clearing her mind of the stressful and dangerous work they were doing, though, was that her thoughts went to even darker places still. She hadn't tried to call or email Will in a month now, having been more preoccupied than ever with the safety of their small group, and the constant moving around and watchfulness was putting the final straw on her weary frame. He had never answered an email or picked up a call. She had no way of even knowing if he was receiving any of her communications. Maybe he had changed his numbers, maybe he had her blocked, and her offerings were all relegated to the ether before he even knew they existed. Their break-up had been so painful, as far from clean as one could possibly imagine, that taking the foreign correspondent post and vanishing more or less overnight had seemed as if it would be doing a mercy to them both. Even after devastating Will by being a fool with Brian, she continued to hurt him by not being the adult and severing the connection for good. Will raged and he brooded, he yelled and alternately ignored. They made tearful love to one another, almost more painful for both than the betrayal itself. Needful of any attention at all, on the third day after she told him, Mackenzie found herself rapt by his anger. When he fell into a dulled silence, she longed for him to shout, longed for the curl of his lip as he angrily asked her why, why, why. Had to have him touch her if only to push her away. Desired above all else for his gaze to meet hers, even if there was only pain and gathering hatred. It was that third day that she packed and left, cowardly, while he was out. A week later she was in Baghdad.

1 of 2


	2. Chapter 2

March 22nd 2010

Mackenzie awoke to the smell of the pine forest, the soft sound of lowing cattle somewhere distant, and a deep, deep ache inside. She snatched at the remnants of the dream, caught a thread and held on tight. She saw Will's face behind her eyelids, savoured the memory of a comfortable bed dipping as he lowered himself down beside her, his rakish smile as he unbuttoned her shirt and slid it from her shoulders. In her dream they had come together like they used to, and the phantom sensation of his hot skin was still at her fingertips. She dreamed of his strong shoulders, the shine of sweat on his forehead as he dipped to kiss her, his whispered encouragements for her to let go for him, the soft then hard then careful rhythm and the sounds of the pleasure they shared with one another. She hoped she hadn't cried out in her sleep.

She didn't want to open her eyes. Even though the sense memory of the dream was receding, and disappointing reality began to assert itself more strongly, she kept her eyes closed and indulged herself a little longer. The ache for him washed over her again and she pressed her legs together, clamping a hand there and biting her lip against the gasp that rolled through her. The pleasure was tinged with a familiar melancholy. Time healed nothing. Distraction worked not at all. She needed Will and his forgiveness more than she had ever needed anything in her life. Even this assignment, what should be the pinnacle of her career so far, had become a chore to get through. This job should be setting the blood coursing through her veins, but she was blocked. Mackenzie recognised she was tired, they all were, but her ability to sideline her unfinished business back home grew more and more unmanageable in direct proportion to her weariness. Perhaps her never flagging feelings for Will were her brain's way of keeping her focus off how dangerous Peshawar had become lately. Was she ignoring common sense out of a desire to finish the job or to stay distracted? The dream was gone, and only a regretful aftermath of pleasure remained. Mac allowed her eyes to open, and for all of their current realities to come flooding back to mind. Chief among them was the reason she was sleeping outdoors, on the ground in a too-hot sleeping bag - the man who had been following them around. She made a decision and woke the others to tell them that they were going to Islamabad and were going to report their latest adventures to law enforcement there, and to make plans for a relief crew to come and replace them.

It was a good thing, she mused to herself as the 4x4 ambled back down the dirt road out of the forest, that they had all switched off their phones and communications equipment for the night, because she would absolutely have tried to call Will again this morning. At least today she wouldn't have to experience the gamut of shame emotions that went with preparing for, making, regretting the call, and then still hoping like the complete idiot she had become that somehow this time would be different and he would respond. When they got out onto the main road and were nearer the capital, she allowed them to boot up and check in, but she never reached for her own phone or computer. She shielded her vision against the rising sun as it glinted painfully off the dirty windshield, glad of an excuse for the moisture in her eyes. _Just get through this_, she told herself again, as she had told herself so many times before. Two years is a good tour, time to stop running and go home.

Sat March 27th, 2010

It was quiet in Will's apartment. His upstairs neighbours had moved out and he didn't hear the clacking of the woman's heels back and forth all morning. Why she wore stilettos in the house was beyond him, but he lay back in bed and tried to enjoy the novel peace. He was awake too early again, was sleeping well enough until this week, and it was frustrating. He reached for his Blackberry and checked his email, scanning for the name of the CIA deputy director he had been in contact with these past three years, a college roommate who had finally become some use to him. She had never gone incommunicado for this long before, and nobody could tell him anything - not the CIA, not her employers, not military security. The email she had sent more than a month ago had been more of the same, and he had sneered at her filling him in on the routine they had settled into in Pakistan, like he cared. Now he found himself at the whim of feelings he did not care for one bit, uncertainty and regret being the most annoying to the superior calm he thought he had achieved as far as Mac was concerned. What was she playing at? She should be checking in once every 24 hours, and while his contact at the CIA wouldn't ever give him any details, he had always been able to locate her to within a couple of square miles. When she had disappeared for the one day, he had ignored the mild relief he felt when she reported in again from Islamabad the morning after. Then they broke in to that evening's newscast with footage from a local crew, of burning buildings and rioting in the streets of the Pakistani capital following a planned protest that the government had tried to interfere with. Don went to commercial before Will had the chance to ask the stringer about other news crews in the area, and Will yelled at him for two of the three minutes till they came back. Will read the next segment, on Rosie O'Donnell's return to daytime and Betty White passing on an offer to host on _The View_, off the teleprompter and felt out of his body. The rest of the week was a vacuum of information as far as Mac and Pakistan went. It had now been four full days of nothing any of his contacts could tell him as to her whereabouts.

He rose and dressed and headed to the office, early for a workday and an unheard of hour for a Saturday, but the alternative was to be home alone in his too-quiet apartment with nothing to do but chew on his tail. He called his date and canceled their plans for the evening, and realised how far off his feed this whole thing was putting him. His brain turned over all the different ways this could and should have gone, all the things he might have done to alter things just enough that he didn't find himself tormented now. Was it his fault she left? Would it be his fault if she left and never came back? Why was he affording her any consideration after what she had done? He hated that he still wanted her, after what she did. He wanted to pull her close and push her away all at once. He remembered the team they had been, what work they had done, and he thought back on the 'news' they had reported this past week alone and finally allowed himself to feel a stab of shame. Things just didn't work right for him, without her. He knew the disgust he felt at himself he was projecting onto her. He hated himself for the feelings he still had, hated her for making him have them. What was he doing now? Treading water? Waiting for her to come back and fix things? Where the fuck was she?

Don passed by the office and asked why Will was in on a Saturday, and offered to prep him for the media panel he was due to sit on next week. Will declined tersely, still mad at Don for something he couldn't remember. He opened up Mackenzie's month-old email, trying to read between the lines for some clue as to what had happened, a serious exercise in futility that he repeated again and again. He read it again when he came into the office on Sunday, not liking the sound of his own thoughts with the tangents they took when he was alone at home now. Four days stretched into seven, and on into ten, and Will found himself in a car headed from O'Hare to Northwestern's campus with quite a high from the free-flowing booze on the flight and the prescription painkiller he had used one of his drinks to wash down. He wasn't sure why he qualified to be on this panel at Medill, the absolute dross that had become eighty percent of his show not what he would have called 'news' in the past. Charlie had insisted he attend, said it would be good for him to get out of town and mix with some different faces and voices for at least one night. The moderator and other two panelists argued about things Will had stopped caring about taking a position on, so the first half of the event was actually fairly restful as he deflected questions with what he thought an endearingly flippant charm. He sipped on his water and felt the four drinks from the plane slowly but surely wear off, the charm ebbing away with his buzz, and then the audience Q&A began.

Will looked at the bright, clean faces, heard the green and hopeful voices asking the pointless questions that students newly exposed to the world always asked. He felt tired, he felt irked. He wanted another drink. Where was Mac? Would she just go like this, just gone one day and she was gone forever? For a year he was determined he had nothing else he would ever need to say to her, and for another year he had all the words in the world eating up his insides with no target to aim at. This last year he couldn't say what he felt. He would not contact her, would not respond. Her punishment was to be absolutely exiled from his attention, a decision more firmly cemented in his wounded heart with every message on his voicemail, every email. The more she begged for his attention, the stronger he felt in being further removed. And yet, now she was truly beyond being outcast to his satisfaction, he felt a rising panic at things too permanent, things too final. As immutable as his position had been, Will now panicked that he hadn't prepared for this contingency. Was this how he wanted them to be over, forever? If she was dead out there, and he swallowed down on the rising gall that idea pushed up from his gut into his throat, how would he ever move forward? He realised he'd moved not one step since she had been gone, and the thought winded him. He was back three years, the pain as fresh, and she was gone forever. He felt ill. A chill sweat prickled up his back and he shifted in his seat, drawing the attention of the moderator once again. The room spun and he prayed he would not be asked a question. And then he saw her, up there in the audience, a row far back... his stomach dropped and he felt a tingle of adrenaline in his fingers and toes. He squinted into the house lights and the woman's face came into sharper relief. Same hair, same build, but not his Mackenzie. It looked so much like her, but it was impossible. He realised how badly he wanted it to be her. He was being asked a question. Pain and rage welled up, and the blonde sophomore was asking her stupid question once more. He glanced up again. Mac always did know him better than anyone. The lack of sleep and the uncertainty and all of the stuff he didn't want to be feeling any more and this dumb fucking question fried his final nerve. _It's not the greatest country in the world, professor, that's my answer._


End file.
